PowerColor Devil HD 7870 Review

PowerColor Devil HD 7870 Introduction:

The devil is back in town. Not content to rest on its laurels, PowerColor today is launching the Devil HD 7870 that takes all the things that made its class leading Devil 13 HD 7990 to the limits, in terms of cooling and performance, down to the mainstream market. The HD 7870 is one of the best bang for the buck cards in the product stack, so this really is an opportunity for PowerColor to extend the legs, per se, of the Pitcairn-based HD 7870 GPUs a little further with what looks like a really sweet looking card.

Packed full of solid engineering, you get PowerColor's Platinum Power Kit that uses a 7+1+1 phase Digital PWM, Super Capacitors, and an ultra efficient three fan, quad heat pipe-equipped cooling solution to handle the 1100MHz clock speed on the core and 1250MHz on the 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Slapping a larger heat sink with two or more fans is a way to cooling stardom in some cases but not all, however PowerColor does tout the Devil HD 7870's cooling solution as being able to deliver temperatures 25% cooler and noise levels 18% quieter than reference design cards.

Cooler, quieter, big clocks, and a custom PCB and VRM are all traits you want with your video card to allow it to last as long as possible between refresh cycles, maximizing your investment. Priced at $259, the Devil HD 7870 is on the high side of the pricing scale. Let's see if it can deliver performance to go with the rest of the package.

PowerColor Devil HD 7870 Closer Look:

Sweet simple, black, and elegant packaging is what you get with the Devil HD 7870. As you can see the black is offset with the red seal inside the window in the front panel with red streaks around the periphery of the box. The sides feature the "Devil" logo while the back panel takes a deeper dive into what makes the Devil HD 7870 tick, including an exploded view of the card's cooling solution. Right on top are one of the value added items included with this card, a gaming style mouse pad with a surface that feels much like that on my Razer eXactMat. Underneath the gaming pad are the few hardware accessories included and the card itself packed deeply in the foam core for protection during transit.

The accessory bundle included with the Devil HD 7870 is pretty slim with the driver disc, gaming pad with the Devil logo front and center, a DVI to VGA adapter, and a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapter. Most modern gaming systems are going to have the required dual 6-pin PEG connectors on their power supply so missing these is not really a big deal for most of us. The gaming pad is a nice addition and feels stout enough to handle some long term usage.

Just the specifications alone make this an appealing card that should handle the latest games by way of its factory overclocked and cooled nature. Did PowerColor put together a solid part? Let's find out!